I've chosen not to do this as a poll so as to keep the scope as wide as possible, but the title says it all really. What for you is the best series finale there's been for a sci-fi or fantasy show ?? And why ??

Remember, that's series finale, not season finale ;)

[Edit] - Oops, nearly forgot, any spoilers, please clearly mark them. Cheers :)

Without a doubt, What you leave behind! An admirable finale for a fantastic series. We had space battles, intrigue, and right to the end, character development. I loved it.

Then Sleeping in light, would come a close second, still brings a tear to my eye.

I can think of three offhand;

What You Leave Behind, Not Fade Away and unsurprisingly, Sleeping in Light.

*****WYLB Spoilers*****

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I loved WYLB I must admit. Of all the Trek shows DS9 is my preference. It took a while to grow on me, but one of the aspects of a series I always value highest is the characters and their dynamics. DS9 was near faultless to this end. As you say, even at the end, Damar's character progression was so surprising yet so logical. I never cared for that particular character until those last few episodes. You have to wonder whether this was a path originally to have been taken by Dukat. And there I touch upon one of the things that irked me over DS9's final few seasons, the regression of Dukat to pretty much where the character started off, evil. Watching his redemption over the middle seasons of DS9 was a great line for the character, then they went and ruined it :rolleyes:. Still, the finale was a great finale; loved the little b&w flashback montage towards the end, highlighting each character and giving them a send off. The final scenes in Vic's were a perfect way to end it as well. And then you have the issue of Sisko, fancy leaving that hanging the way they did, the b*stards !! :lol:



*****Not Fade Away Spoilers*****

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Wow. That was pretty much my first reaction. And then :mad: A perfect way to end what had been a remarkable series. I actually found the fifth season to be a blessed return to form after what had been IMO a poor fourth season. At least we can say that the series went out on a high. The closing chapters of the finale were some of the best scenes in the entire series. Don't particularly want to go into too much detail on this one, given that a lot of people probably still haven't seen it. Suffice to say, this is probably my second favourite finale of them all, which brings me onto numero uno.....


*****Sleeping in Light Spoilers*****

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I'm fairly sure that most people are aware of my feelings for B5 by now. The series that weened me off my 'Star Trek IS science fiction and nothing else matters attitude'. For four years B5 had redefined the genre and proved once and for all that Star Trek isn't the be all and end all of science fiction. Even in this fifth season, there were a few highlights, and JMS maintained the feel of B5 being a televisual novel with his closing chapters to the series. Watching the final arc of 4 or 5 episodes always gives me the same kind of feeling I get when I read the closing chapters of The Lord of the Rings, as all the players go their separate ways, indeed as Joe points out himself, objects in motion and finally objects at rest. Those final episodes give the series a finality and resolution that other series can only dream of having. DS9 came close, but look at Voyager. This is exactly the kind of route that they should have taken. After nearly five years I want to see where all these characters end up. Amazingly though, Joe not only manages to tie these characters up to a certain degree, but he also leaves avenues open, whilst still giving the viewer a sense of satisfaction.

With regards to the final episode, SiL is a devastating episode. First you have the content, which by it's very nature is bad enough on the old emotions, worse still is the fact that you know this is the end, a final goodbye to the characters, double whammy !! The episode starts of well, but just gets better and better as it rolls along. The episode has a strong spine of outstanding scenes; The dinner scene and toast to "absent friends, in memory still bright", the final heartbreaking scene between Sheridan and Delenn, Sheridan's final tour of the station, culminating with the gutting destruction of the station itself.

I know some fans were unhappy with the nature of the final show, instead wanting the show to go out all guns blazing. In it's way, that's exactly what it did. One of B5's strengths was that it could always nail the powerful episodes when it needed to. The Coming of Shadows, In The Shadow of Z'ha'dum, Comes the Inquisitor, Severed Dreams, Into the Fire, Endgame. Sleeping in Light was the best of them IMO. Fantastic.

After a brief discussion with "The Doc" I have been compelled to add my third/joint second, favourite finale to the mix.

All Good things..

A magnificent send off for a series that reinvigorated american sci-fi. The characters had long since stopped being crewmates and become a family, and this was, there televisual swansong. The time jumping, was a little jarring first time around, but I suppose it was meant to be. Seeing Tasha again was fun too. But the greatest feat they managed was putting the air of menace back into Q. They had over the series reduced him to "light relief" levels in the show, and not the all powerful enemy from "Encounter at farpoint". Which made sense really, considering how the two stories were intrinsically linked. Just as all opening and closing chapters should be. I got a sense of natural conclusion, yet the possibilities still seemed boundless. The Final Frontier was still there, waiting to be explored, and this family were going to be the first to get there. A masterpiece :thumbsup:

I must admit I loved All Good Things. I particularly liked how there was a revisitation to the Farpoint mission and the appearance of Q, in juxtaposition to his initial dealings with humanity, here he was actually trying to help them. There were some great scenes as well, the Data/Picard first meeting aboard the Enterprise springs to mind, and there was the welcome reappearance of some familiar faces; Tasha, O'Brien, Tamalak etc. All in all a wonderful episode.

The only thing that goes against it in my mind when we're talking of great finales is the fact that it was common knowledge when we saw it that this wasn't the end, indeed they were already working on the movie. That impacted upon the finality, and somewhat undermined it to a certain extent. I felt a lot sadder for example watching WYLB because we pretty much knew that this was the end for these characters. That's a minor gripe aside though, it's a great episode, and has probably one of the best closing shots of any series. The poker scene was a very fitting send off.

Have you ever wondered?

how badly Picard fleeced the rest of them in that game?

lol

He probably pulled rank on them :lol: